Every nation has had its heroines as well as its heroes.  England, in her wars, had a Florence Nightingale; and the soldiers in the expression of their adoration, used to stoop and kiss the hem of her garment as she passed.  America, in her war, had a Dr. Mary Walker.  Nobody ever stooped to kiss the hem of her garment—­because that was not exactly the kind of a garment she wore.  But why should man stand here and attempt to speak for woman, when she is so abundantly equipped to speak for herself.  I know that is the case in New England; and I am reminded, by seeing General Grant here to-night, of an incident in proof of it which occurred when he was making that marvelous tour through New England, just after the war.  The train stopt at a station in the State of Maine.  The General was standing on the rear platform of the last car.  At that time, as you know, he had a great reputation for silence—­for it was before he had made his series of brilliant speeches before the New England Society.  They spoke of his reticence—­a quality which New Englanders admire so much—­in others.  Suddenly there was a commotion in the crowd, and as it opened a large, tall, gaunt-looking woman came rushing toward the car, out of breath.  Taking her spectacles off from the top of her head and putting them on her nose, she put her arms akimbo, and looking up, said:  “Well, I’ve just come down here a runnin’ nigh onto two mile, right on the clean jump, just to get a look at the man that lets the women do all the talkin’.”

The first regular speaker of the evening (William M. Evarts) touched upon woman, but only incidentally, only in reference to Mormonism and that sad land of Utah, where a single death may make a dozen widows.

A speaker at the New England dinner in Brooklyn last night (Henry Ward Beecher) tried to prove that the Mormons came originally from New Hampshire and Vermont.  I know that a New Englander sometimes in the course of his life marries several times; but he takes the precaution to take his wives in their proper order of legal succession.  The difference is that he drives his team of wives tandem, while the Mormon insists upon driving his abreast.

But even the least serious of us, Mr. President, have some serious moments in which to contemplate the true nobility of woman’s character.  If she were created from a rib, she was made from that part which lies nearest a man’s heart.

It has been beautifully said that man was fashioned out of the dust of the earth while woman was created from God’s own image.  It is our pride in this land that woman’s honor is her own best defense; that here female virtue is not measured by the vigilance of detective nurses; that here woman may walk throughout the length and the breadth of this land, through its highways and byways, uninsulted, unmolested, clothed in the invulnerable panoply of her own woman’s virtue; that even in places where crime lurks and vice prevails in the haunts of